With the Longmont City Council's decision Tuesday to prohibit overnight camping at Union Reservoir, there is now nowhere in the city residents can legally pitch a tent for a night.

But overnight outdoor camping in prohibited areas, especially in spots along the St. Vrain Creek Greenway currently closed to the public, is considered by city officials a source of challenges in keeping Longmont parks safe and clean.

Sandstone Ranch Park in southeast Longmont, specifically, has attracted overnight homeless and transient campers — and thus become a symptom of a city-wide trend — since a portion of it closed due to damage the area sustained in the 2013 floods.

Further, the park's adjacency to the Walmart store's parking lot at 2285 E. Ken Pratt Blvd., where some people loiter for extended periods, leads to many crossing into the adjacent Sandstone Ranch, often after hours, propelling it to "hotspot" status for criminal activity such as public intoxication and liquor law violations, illegal camping and vandalism, Toste said.

While a Walmart corporate policy allows motorists to park overnight and sleep in participating stores' parking lots, a Walmart spokeswoman said the Longmont location does not currently allow camping, with notice signs posted in the lot to prevent stays and security employees actively enforcing the no-camping approach.

Law enforcement role

Among eight parks managed by the city — Sandstone Ranch, Roosevelt, Collyer, Kanemoto, Loomiller, Dawson, Blue Sky and Golden Ponds parks — Sandstone ranks second in the number of notable calls to which Longmont police responded for the last three years.

For instance, officers were dispatched to Roosevelt Park, 700 Longs Peak Ave., on reports of either assault, vandalism, drug and liquor law violations, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing, harassment, curfew violations or physical and verbal disturbances 191 times from 2015 through 2017, according to data from a Longmont Police Department crime analyst.

Despite its location remote from dense population, Sandstone Ranch had 144 such calls to police during the same period.

Loomiller Park rounded out the top three with 135 calls.

Roosevelt Park had 49 reports of trespassing, 45 of liquor law or public consumption violations, 47 "disturbances" and eight "criminal mischief," or vandalism, calls in the three years.

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Curfew violations were most common at Sandstone Ranch, with 76 in the three years, followed by 20 reports of trespassing, 12 of criminal mischief and nine of drug violations.

The statistics do not reflect all officer responses to parks, as entries gained elsewhere from parks' exact listed addresses are not trackable.

In fact, because most parks have a porous entry system, city staff said they struggle to post each park's rules where they are universally visible. All parks in the city are open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, and the city lists rules for each park on its website.

Not all calls reporting suspicious activity in parks result in arrests, citations or tickets, as many callers fail to realize that a park patron simply making others uncomfortable with their behavior is not necessarily illegal, said Longmont police Cmdr. Joel Post.

"You can set up a tent in the park during the day. What you can't do is set up a tent at 11:01 p.m.," Toste said.

Still, officials urge residents to trust their guts more often than not and alert authorities anytime something seems strange in a public park.

"These are public places and people do have rights to be there. As long as they're following our rules, we accept and we're going to treat them like anyone else," said Longmont Natural Resources Manager David Bell.

Outcomes of police calls to parks vary from an officer doing nothing, to issuing a verbal warning, all the way to making an arrest, with decisions sometimes hinging on how many times officers have been called to deal with the same person previously, Post said.

Exposing hiding spots

Final results of multi-million dollar phases of the Resilient St. Vrain project will weed out illegal campers, city officials hope, by removing the thick shrubbery along the St. Vrain Creek Greenway that has made concealing a campsite — or other illegal activity — possible.

Sandstone Ranch partially closing to the public for the flood recovery effort had reverse effects on some, said city spokeswoman Jennifer Loper.

"What that (closure) means is we haven't had folks out there walking around, riding their bikes. Some of that citizen alertness you might get when someone sees a pile of stuff that makes it look like someone had a party last night ... wasn't happening," Loper said. "Even though it's technically closed and off-limits, that might be where someone looking for a good place to hang out would come."

Sandstone Ranch is expected to fully open later this spring after improvements are complete.

Views of the greenway opening as a result of vegetation removal along the creek in the area between Main Street east to where Left Hand Creek joins the St. Vrain will expose other areas known to attract homeless and transient campers.

"You can see that area changing. Before there was a lot of undergrowth, non-native vegetation, some aggressive species had come in there. It was right up to the edge of the creek. There won't be those scraggly pockets for someone to have a camp in," Loper said.

Leaders of Resilient St. Vrain have discussed how the project can mitigate the issues of illegal camping and related vagrancy since its conception, Loper said.

Community solutions

Richard Showers, a resident of the historic east side of Longmont who lives near Collyer Park, took it upon himself to clean up his neighborhood.

Around August, he organized nearby residents to walk around Collyer Park and the surrounding neighborhood daily and pick up trash. Friday was no exception, as Showers embarked upon his cleanup walk from the southwest park shelter at 8:45 a.m.

"When we first started, I would maybe walk by a homeless person in the park and we would be invisible to each other," Showers said.

Persisting in his walks each morning helped him break down those barriers, he said, and he since helped implement a lost-and-found collection to help homeless residents — since many constantly carry all their belongings — retrieve items they may have lost or left in the park.

Showers also started a group called Empowered Neighbors Longmont, which hosts conversations on improving the community through volunteerism. It meets at 9:30 a.m. on the third Thursday of each month at the Longmont OUR Center, 220 Collyer St.

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